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Tonight’s Global Math topic has a totally un-catchy name but I assure you, the content promises to be excellent. We’re going to hear from Bob Lochel, Justin Aion, Mattie Baker, and Lisa Bejarano.

Join us at Global Math Department tonight at 9pm Eastern Daylight Time to hear “Interesting Things Found by the MTBoS”. Each presenter has about 10 minutes to share a favorite resource or technique they’ve shared or found on Twitter, their blogs, or the internet-at-large.

Never heard of Global Math Department? We offer the best professional development math teachers can attend in their pajamas. Our free meetings are held every Tuesday at 9pm Eastern (2am Wednesday GMT) and are recorded for later viewing. We also have a weekly newsletter that’s absolutely worth your time.

My school is looking to hire an upper school math teacher starting next year. We’re located in Atlanta. I can say many great things about this school but will simplify it to just one personal anecdote: Liz and I were ready to move to Cincinnati when I heard they were hiring. We postponed our plans for a year. And now maybe forever. I mean, c’mon folks, I gave up ready access to Jungle Jim’s and Dewey’s Pizza for The Westminster Schools.

Message me privately if you plan to apply so I can tell the Dean of Faculty I sent you.

The Westminster Schools announces a search for an Upper School Math Teacher beginning in the 2015-16 academic year.

Applicant must have the ability to teach any course in the high school from Geometry through Multi Variable Calculus. This includes AP Statistics, AP Calculus AB, and AP Calculus BC. Experience with classroom technology and its appropriate use in teaching, enhancing, exploring, and supporting mathematics teaching is required, including:

Dynamic geometry software (Cabri Geometry or The Geometer’s Sketchpad) to enhance the teaching and learning of geometric concepts

Use of iPads in the classroom

Use of laptops in a one-to-one classroom environment

In addition to experience and a strong educational background, successful candidates demonstrate a love of working with children, an engaging teaching style, the ability to interact well with parents and colleagues, and a willingness to create and promote an inclusive learning environment. Duties may include participating in professional and curricular development and serving as an advisor to students. Candidates should be able to contribute to the larger school community through coaching or sponsoring other extracurricular programs. The Westminster Schools is committed to the principle of equal opportunity in employment. It is Westminster’s policy to provide equal employment opportunities and administer terms and conditions of employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, marital status, amnesty or status as a covered veteran in accordance with applicable federal, state and local laws.

I like to have Alex read me about half a page at a time. Sometimes I read along with Alex and other times I bring my grading rubric to the foreground.

Why does this work for me? I think because it fixes my #1 problem with reading: I get a page into a paper and wonder what the heck I just read (and not just because the kid’s work is that bad). Looking back, when I was a kid, my reading comprehension scores were always relatively low, which might explain things. Anyhow, maybe dictation will help you or a student. Let me know if it does?

The physics of musical instruments project is a great opportunity for my students to try their first technical writing.

Why Write?

Students write, revise, and rewrite in English classes and I think they should do the same in science. I say this mostly as a former technical writer who mentored under a fabulous editor. I learned how to edit nearly anything I wrote down to half its length while retaining all its meaning, how to apply the inverted pyramid of journalism so I could be certain readers got the most important details, how to use the simplest words possible, and how to receive editing feedback in a positive — rather than critical — light.

How to Teach Tech Writing

Most importantly, I began to think of myself as a writer. That’s a big deal for a person who hated every writing assignment in high school.

How do I propose teaching technical writing in a science (or math!) class?

Devote in-class time because this is likely the first tech writing you’ve asked your kids to do.

Bring the librarian in to share resources and discuss proper citation style. For my 9th graders, this is their introduction to the Upper School library, so she’s invested in the effort as well. Pro tip: my librarian pulls books for a reserve cart that lives in my classroom during the project so kids have one less thing to worry about.

Books on the reserve shelf in my room.

Get the librarian involved.

Spend the time explicitly teaching the tech skills needed to produce a paper in the platform of your choice. Word, Google Docs, or WordPress all have their quirks. Pick one and teach it. This year, I showed them how to insert a page header with automatic page numbering, how to insert page breaks, write equations, and use the Insert Symbol command.

Share examples of good tech writing style. For instance, kids will be surprised to learn that passive voice, so often maligned in English class, is expected in a science lab report.

Read drafts of their paper in class and offer real-time feedback. I caution kids to edit out sentences that don’t add value such as “I really learned a lot from this project.” Oh, and I challenge them to write the shortest possible paper. Too often, these kids have been told to write a minimum length that they’ve become masters at faking a longer looking paper. No one has time for that (them or me!). Shorter wins.

Results

Last year, I demanded kids write their entire research paper (3-5 pages double spaced, so kind of short) on their own time. To be nice, I did remove demands for homework in addition to this paper for the week prior the due date.

This year, I devoted more than enough class time to write the papers in class — about 3 full class periods or around 200 minutes. The time was worth it. This year’s papers are better and based on comparing to last year, we’re not falling behind.

We have one other big writing project due this semester so I look forward to seeing how their writing evolves.

Next Steps

My rubrics (at the end of the project descriptions) are acceptable but need revision. Several papers had flaws that I couldn’t figure out how to grade because the flaws weren’t directly addressed in the rubric. The easiest solution seems to be to add “and is well-written” to the highest score for every element.

Are you writing in science (or math!) class? How do you incorporate it? Have you seen writing incorporated horribly? Tell me about it in the comments.

Short YouTube videos are a great way to share a lesson with students. I like this for days I’m going to be out but still need to explicitly instruct or demonstrate a problem solution. Sample videos recorded this way at the bottom of this post.

I asked for a scaled blueprint with dimensions and got this. It’s a pinhole camera made from a oats container, in case that wasn’t obvious.

While getting ready to report for planning days (we call it Faculty Forum at my school), I ran across this Evernote note: Tech Skills to Explicitly Teach in 2014-15.

Every one of these items bugged the hell out of me last year. Then I realized no one’s ever taught them these skills and it’s appropriate to learn them in freshman year. As you read my list, what would you add? Remove? Remember, these kids are freshmen in a school with 1-to-1 laptops.

Taking good photos and drawing good diagrams for technical papers. Cause this Quaker Oats crap above isn’t cutting it for me.

Dem backgrounds distract me in photos.

They couldn’t be bothered to clear the counter off before taking the photo?

After 164 posts spanning 178 days of regular-year school plus 11 days (and counting!) of summer school, I finally feel ready to share what I learned from the experience and why I think daily reflection should be a part of your practice, too.

TL;DR

I wrote a blog post every day this past school year. It was awesome. If you want to make a 180 blog, I recommend: 1) be ok with the fact that not many people will read the blog, 2) include a picture every day, 3) have a routine to remember to take said photo every day, and 4) focus on one detail from your day rather than summarizing the day.

Statistics

Unless you’re a rockstar, your 180 blog will be pretty much you and your mom reading it. That’s ok! To give you a measuring stick, here are my three most popular 180 blog posts of all time:

I don’t get a ton of readers to the 180 blog — maybe 25 views in a day is typical.

Twitter refers 10 times more readers than the next source, search engines. Connect your 180 blog to your Twitter account so they’ll auto-post. I make sure post titles are short and all start with the day number for consistency’s sake.

Efficiency & Routine

Use the WordPress app for your phone. I usually upload the pictures directly from my phone, save the post as a draft, then type your reflection on the computer.

It’s easy to forget to take photos, so I recommend you come up with a way to remember. Here are a few ideas I’ve used at various times:

Get your students in on the fun by telling them about your blog. Ask them to remind you to take pictures of interesting stuff you do in class.

Set an alarm for some time every day where you’re at least close to doing something interesting.

Carry your phone on your person at all times so you’re prepared to take photos.

Encourage students to take photos and share them with you afterwards.

By the second half of the school year, I entered every class looking for the blog photo. Sometimes, though, we just had some boring classwork going on. That’s when I felt the pressure. I can’t believe I’m about to admit this but I found that those 25 readers per day got me to up my game. Blogs that post a photo and discussion about student work are cool, so that was a fallback for those dull days.

Nice Touches

Be sure to anonymize your kids’ faces. I like Skitch because it has a pixelate tool that I can apply right on my phone. Better yet, get creative about camera angles so faces are never even in the pictures.

Good camera angle = anonymous students.

Link to the activities, labs, and assignments you’re describing in the post. I noticed folks would sometimes click on those files. We, your readers, prefer editable documents over PDF. Sharing docs is my small way to give back because some of my favorite lessons have been created from a picture or a few words on the 180 blogs of my friends.

So what do you do if you fall behind as I did for most of April? The way I see it, you have three options: 1) carry on as if nothing happened, picking up at the next day you think about it; b) do a catch-up post as I did; iii) say “screw it” and quit blogging all together. I hope you’ll choose one of the first two options.

What to Write About

I still don’t think something all that interesting happens every single day of my school year. So the trick is to think like a marketer: what one thing would you share from your day in a commercial about how awesome your class is? Even in a dull day, you must’ve seen or done something interesting. I enjoyed sharing organization tricks I appreciate, robotics season updates, and even a small about weather craziness.

My opinion? Don’t summarize the entire day. I think 180 blogs are most successful when they focus on one detail from the day. Also don’t be afraid to think outside the (school) box — that one detail may not happen between 8a-3p.

Reflection

Many 180 bloggers cite daily reflection as their reason to post every day. In fact, my friend Justin reflects more than many mirrors. I’m impressed with his transparency and willingness to hash it out in public. I, however, am way too concerned with public appearances to make that move. Doesn’t mean I’m not reflecting — I found myself reflecting as I was writing, even if the text didn’t make it onto the blog.

Yes, there were horrible days of me trying to wing it with poorly planned materials. Instead of sharing that with the world, I opted to find one good thing in every day to share with you. This is based loosely on the inspiration I get over at the One Good Thing blog.

If this post inspires you to start a 180 blog, would you do me the favor of posting your URL as a comment here?

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Licensing

I recommend all bloggers license their work. The Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license I use is a great way to protect your work from being used without your permission for commercial purposes.

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